The Lightning Strike
by Fire-Chan9490
Summary: A sort of triptych based on each part of "The Lightning Strike" by Snow Patrol. Because I'm massively uncreative, and music serves as a substitute. /It's like the Thames is flooding, but we won't drown if we hold on./
1. What If This Storm Ends?

**Title:** The Lightning Strike  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> BBC Sherlock  
><strong>Rating:<strong> K+  
><strong>PairingsCharacters:** Sherlock/John. If you narrow your eyes a fraction.  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> n/a  
><strong>Wordcount:<strong> part 1: 826, total: 3107 (according to my count)  
><strong>Summary:<strong> A sort of triptych based on each part of "The Lightning Strike" by Snow Patrol. (Youtube: watch?v=2Q3KFwHhW-0) Because I'm massively uncreative, and music serves as a substitute. _It's like the Thames is flooding, but we won't drown if we hold on._

**Beta:** avianautumnus

**Disclaimer:** *insert the usual here*

**Crossposted to Livejournal:** fire-chan9490 (dot) livejournal (dot) com (slash) 43647 (dot) html

* * *

><p>Only a moment, and it all changes, the shift so indescribable, even his own mind fails to identify, categorise it. Suddenly, everything is bright and brilliant and there is insanity and adrenaline within him the likes of which he's never felt before, and god, he doesn't want it to end.<p>

He stares at John, and John stares back with a mad, fractured grin. The danger is there, highlighted in every line in his face, the glare of the lightning that traces his perfect-not-perfect silhouette against the storming black sky –

Sherlock looks, and the shock that thrums through him has nothing to do with the thunder that sounds so loudly he can feel his heart skip from the bass of it and everything to do with the man before him. His mouth is dry, empty despite the rivulets of water that run down his face. No words rise to his lips, none, but a thousand rise to the forefront of his ceaselessly churning mind: _ephemeral, dangerous, visceral, human, normal, unusual, ordinary, extraordinary, broken, whole, damaged, shattered, dynamic, _on and on and on.

He doesn't want this to stop, tries to catch the instant as it starts to slip because it's so new, so strange to him. He is not bored, not one bit. He can take on the world, raise the wrath of a hundred million sleeping snakes and come out of it alive, _alive._ It's terrifying and wonderful and different.

.

Cracking the cases like raw eggs and separating yolk from white, truth from false leads: easy, easy, easy. Long white fingers that grasped and untangled the scarlet threads from the colourless skein, eyes blindfolded by smothering normalcy. Alone in brilliance, burning everything around him, he was so sick of it. Sick of watching the sheep in uniform addle their little mundane brains trying to keep up, sick of trying to rein in his fires so that this narrow, stupid world (_that flies around the bloody sun, damn it_) can accommodate him.

And then there was John. John, who is so frighteningly typical on the surface, but who kills without hesitation, without tremors in his left hand.

John, with the calm, friendly face, so surprised and grateful when his cane was presented to him at the end of their first (_intoxicating_) run. John, with the calm, friendly face, so surprised and disappointed when he heard about the cocaine and the morphine (_This guy? A junkie?_).

Just as high on adrenaline as Sherlock is, just as dangerous, if not more. Still slate-grey-blue eyes that bore with a constant strength and curiosity, not like his own that slice and dissect like surgeons' knives with a butcher's efficiency. It's nearly comforting, at least as comforting as monotonous sameness and not-threats can be. The constant strength is not enough to reach him.

Except that it is.

And it almost doesn't bother him, except it does, except it doesn't.

But it was such a slight not-disturbance at the time that he chose to delete it.

.

"Sherlock?" John shakes his head, attempting to shake the water from his face. Sherlock says nothing, the image of John Watson dazzled by silver white lightning still imprinted on the backs of his retinas. "Sherlock, we're going to lose them." The mad grin is beginning to dissipate, exchanged for a slight uncertainty as Sherlock fails to move.

The rain pours down in humming sheets, and the moment is starting to fade already, the sheer normalcy of the world pressing in like large clumsy hands against the fragile bubble of the second. For once in his life, he does not want to keep running, just wants to stand there, and let it wash over him in waves like ecstasy. He knows he can't.

Deliberately, he closes his eyes, still observing that frozen dynamic image, still feeling John's presence in his veins like the electricity that had cut through the night and divided his life into ignorant and aware. John has been with him for some time, yes. He has killed for Sherlock, and the gunshot still echoes there in the beat of the rain. He had been too shocked, too caught up in the case to really _think,_ to really _feel,_ but now he saves this awareness, every detail, the _shhhhhh_ of tires on wet asphalt, even the ugly London street smell, like carefully folding away something precious and storing it in the attic.

"Sherlock, are you all right?" He opens his eyes, and the bubble collapses in on itself. Evanescent, quite possibly never there. John does not look dangerous or brilliant; he looks wet and bedraggled and slightly ticked at his lack of response, but then there it is, glowing in the attic of Sherlock's mind and sparkling behind those constant slate-grey-blue eyes.

He grins, a mad grin to replace the one that has left John's face. "I am on _fire,_" he declares in exhilaration, and they are running into the night again.

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><p>AN: I haven't written fic in ages. If anything blatantly sucks, please. Forgive me.


	2. The Sunlight Through the Flags

**Title:** The Lightning Strike  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> BBC Sherlock  
><strong>Rating:<strong> K+  
><strong>PairingsCharacters:** Sherlock/John. If you narrow your eyes a fraction.  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> n/a  
><strong>Wordcount:<strong> part 2: 1256, total: 3107 (according to my count)  
><strong>Summary:<strong> A sort of triptych based on each part of "The Lightning Strike" by Snow Patrol. (Youtube: watch?v=cHl6dLaUAjk) Because I'm massively uncreative, and music serves as a substitute. _It's like the Thames is flooding, but we won't drown if we hold on._

**Beta:** avianautumnus

**Disclaimer:** *insert the usual here*

**Crossposted to Livejournal:** fire-chan9490 (dot) livejournal (dot) com (slash) 44534 (dot) html

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><p>"Tea?" John calls from the cluttered kitchen, voice undoubtedly muffled through the haze of near-delirium that hangs over Sherlock. He waits, not very expectantly, for the habitual "please", but it doesn't come. Instead, there's only a disgruntled, childish groan from under the pillow on the couch. John rolls his eyes, carrying the two cups into the living room regardless.<p>

Dishevelled black hair peeks out from around the dusty Union Flag cushion. "You know that's no good for you lungs," he points out, clearing a space on the table for Sherlock's tea as he reclines into the armchair.

"Breathing's boring," Sherlock reminds him irritably, not moving.

"Right. And this has nothing to do with the fact that you've nearly caught pneumonia."

"Shut up."

John obligingly says nothing else. He sips his tea as he reaches for the paper. Sherlock remains motionless.

This continues for approximately five minutes and three crossword clues whereupon John glances over the paper disapprovingly. "Drink your tea."

"Piss off."

"Really, Sherlock?"

Heaving a melodramatic sigh, Sherlock grabs the pillow off his face and attempts to chuck it across the room. It lands flatly not five feet from the sofa. He fixes it with a slightly unfocussed glare. "I am sick and bored, and you've taken my gun."

"Yes, well, forgive me if I don't fancy having Mrs. Hudson putting wall repairs on our rent again. Drink your tea."

"I don't want tea."

"Stop acting like a child," John says dismissively. "You're only sulking because you can't work on the case."

"I do not _sulk._" He pronounces the word with measured distaste, as if it had offended him. It probably had, for that matter. "It's too quiet. Can't stand it."

"… right." Sherlock doesn't stop staring, his profile thrown in sharp relief against the window. The flats across the street are nearly finished with repair, but John doesn't see them. He sees the Thames flooding its banks in his mind's eye until they're the only two floating in the ocean of London.

He busies himself with the paper again.

.

Sherlock claims to hate the silence, but it isn't really the silence that bothers him. It's the incessant pounding inside his own head, the never-ending five-track thought processes that multiply and jumble into innumerable snarls when there isn't anything to focus them.

It isn't the silence; it's the noise.

There's so much ricocheting through his skull, even _he_ doesn't understand or notice half of it. How could he? Probably learned how to ignore the background white noise long ago to get at the important bits gleaming in the static.

John doesn't believe the whole "deleted" trick for a minute. Nothing's been deleted, just buried. Only so much space? As if. The space is infinite. It's Sherlock's attention that's limited, frayed at the edges from spreading himself so thinly over so much. It wasn't that he didn't realise it was the cabbie; he just hadn't noticed the deduction filed neatly away in one of the million corners of his constantly jabbering mind.

John could never match that – who could? No matter how much he pummels his brain in an attempt to at least keep pace, he ends up circling back to emotions in exhaustion, the base code of humanity that Sherlock readily asserts he lacks.

There are the nights when John lies awake in the room upstairs, listening to Sherlock pacing back and forth below. _Kitchen, living room, kitchen, bedroom, living room, kitchen_ – Erlenmeyer flasks clinking in different keys against the dirty counter as he fills and empties them with unknown chemicals. Sometimes, he hears the violin into the early hours of the morning (Sherlock wasn't lying when he said he played it constantly), but he doesn't mind quite as much as he expects because when he's not trying to piss Mycroft off, Sherlock really can play wonderfully.

Once, only once, it isn't the violin he hears. He doesn't know where the hell Sherlock found the crystal glasses, but the unearthly notes ring up unhindered by the walls and echo and echo and echo until he slams his face into the mattress with the pillow pressed firmly over his ears because they're so _empty – _

Abruptly, they stop, and cautiously, he lifts his head, only to have the momentary quiet splintered by a great shattering of who-knows-how-much glassware. It's all he can do not to leap up and run downstairs on the spot, but he knows Sherlock will only expect to be chewed out for the mess and shut down the instant John shows his face. The damage has been done anyways.

In the morning, there isn't a trace of glass shards anywhere. Neither of them mentions it, and John pretends not to see the dark circles beneath his eyes because he knows that's what Sherlock wants.

But John stares when Sherlock's back is to him, and all he can think is how lonely and brilliant he is. _The frailty of genius._

_You're safe,_ he wants to say, but he knows what the response will be.

_Safe's boring._

And those are the moments where he wants to scream at the stupid bloody bastard, because safe is never good enough, pedestrian, even for a short while, just _isn't damn good enough._

Because he's always afraid of the day he's going to come back to the flat and Sherlock is going to have gone too far in his quest to fix himself, lost in a high from which he can never come down.

.

It's been another quarter hour, and Sherlock still hasn't made any move to pick up his tea, but John has seen him eyeing it. The battle is nearly won.

"It's getting cold," he finally says (exaggeration), reaching over to take it away (how could Sherlock resist?). On cue, Sherlock snatches it away, muttering darkly (he knows he's being manipulated, but he's doing it anyways – some tiny vestige left that clings to expectation and routine, and anyway, it's tea).

John hides the smile he can feel tugging on the corners of his mouth at this small victory, bringing up the paper again – that is, until Sherlock suddenly spews the tea in an utterly undignified manner across the table.

"Sherlock – what the _hell – _"

"What did you put in this? It's rubbish," he snaps, swiping at his lips furiously with the back of his hand.

His brow furrows. "Um, nothing. Nothing, I mean – well, there's a bit of honey for your throat, but besides that – "

"I hate honey."

John blinks. "… remind me why you want to keep bees again?"

"It's not a requirement for beekeepers to eat honey," he replies witheringly, placing the cup back on the table with obvious revulsion. "Do you really think I'd be so dull?"

John sighs, getting up out of the armchair to go fetch a rag for cleaning the mess. "You're never going to get better if you keep on like this."

"Who says I want to get better?"

John pauses just long enough to send him a look he hopes is the appropriate ratio of exasperation and scolding. "Now you're just being contrary. Sherlock, would it kill you to pay attention to your health for once?"

Sherlock grumbles something incoherent, then stands abruptly. "I'm going to wash out my mouth." John can hear him stalking off unevenly to the bathroom. Door slams. Faucet squeaks.

Slowly, John sinks back into his armchair, rag held limply in hand. _You're fragile,_ he doesn't call after Sherlock. _Fragile things break._

* * *

><p>AN: The more I read this chapter, the less I like it. . Here's hoping I do better for the end.


	3. Daybreak

**Title:** The Lightning Strike  
><strong>Fandom:<strong> BBC Sherlock  
><strong>Rating:<strong> K+  
><strong>PairingsCharacters:** Sherlock/John. If you narrow your eyes a fraction.  
><strong>Warnings:<strong> n/a  
><strong>Wordcount:<strong> part 3: 1025, total: 3107 (according to my count)  
><strong>Summary:<strong> A sort of triptych based on each part of "The Lightning Strike" by Snow Patrol. (Youtube: watch?v=7crkx40sr8k) Because I'm massively uncreative, and music serves as a substitute. _It's like the Thames is flooding, but we won't drown if we hold on._

**Beta:** avianautumnus

**Disclaimer:** Not mine; please don't sue.

**Crossposted to Livejournal:** fire-chan9490 (dot) livejournal (dot) com (slash) 45293 (dot) html

* * *

><p>They're in an alleyway when the rain starts. It's been a terrible day. The case, sitting on the Yard's desk for a week, has been unbearably dull (<em>obvious – of course it was the younger sister; never dismiss a suspect on account of age<em>), the red tape unnecessarily cumbersome, and the members of the force exceptionally stupid (not all that surprising – Anderson's on it). The sudden rain is merely another inconvenience in a long string of inconveniences.

Well, there's also the small matter of Sherlock getting himself shot, which would be why he's not so much standing in the alley as slumping awkwardly against the wall while John examines the wound.

"You really should have gone after them," Sherlock comments with a slight hiss as John applies pressure to his shoulder. "It's not so bad. Relatively superficial. No bone damage. Should be fine in a month or so – "

"_I'm_ the doctor here," John interrupts. "So _I'll_ be the one giving the diagnosis, thanks. And you're not doing anything with this arm for at least three months. Just stop moving for a minute, would you?" His hands are slick with blood, as is Sherlock's coat (_shame – he'd really liked this one; could put it on Mycroft's bill: it's his fault they're even involved in this crap case – something about "national security" and the conspiracy group behind the murder_). "Here – can you take this off?" He starts gently tugging on the lapels when the first drops fall.

Almost simultaneously, they crane their necks and turn their faces to the sky, squinting against the increasing downpour. Neither says anything for a moment. Then –

"Bloody weather," John curses, more out of ironic amusement than actual irritation. "As if this day weren't rubbish enough." They laugh at that, suppressed chortles at the not-really-that-funny comment. "With our luck, we'll both catch colds this time around."

"No honey in my tea, thanks," Sherlock quips automatically, with a relatively unrefined snort.

"Stop laughing," John commands, not particularly forcefully: the effect is somewhat ruined by the spreading grin on his face. "You'll make your arm worse."

"At least it's not a crime scene."

"Technically, it is, since you've been shot – " He pauses, cocks his head. "Do you hear that?"

Sherlock listens, and at first, all he can hear is the percussive rainbeat on the dirty pavement and the distant swishing of tires against the water, but then –

"Oh." He stands clumsily, moving away from the wall.

"What is it?" John asks. "Sounds like…"

"Church hymns. Music. Yes, John, good for you. We happen to be standing next to one of them." He eyes the wall distrustfully. "Good deduction."

The furrows in John's brow don't disappear. "But why would they be singing so late in the da – ah." Sherlock watches the realisation dawn detachedly. "Memorial service. They're having the funeral for that… that girl." His lips tighten slightly – Sherlock knows it's out of regret for not remembering her name. Pointless, really, but he thinks he might understand this time.

John shakes himself out of his slight reverie, switching his attention back to Sherlock. "Hey, I thought I told you to stop moving around like that. You're losing blood, and your balance'll be off." He jerks his head at the wall. "Get back over here."

"No."

"Sorry?"

"Don't want it."

John stares for a moment. Sherlock won't look at him.

_I've never liked churches.  
><em>_ What, have you got a problem with blind faith or something?  
><em>_Yes. And also the quiet.  
><em>_ (Read: the constraints, the oppressively large spaces, the flatness, the rituals, the tight community, the cracks in the logic, the death, the noise, the noise the noise noisenoise in my head)  
><em>

"Ah." John remembers the hazy half-drunken conversation of several weeks before, remembers the naked trust and Sherlock's transparency and not much else. He almost expects a sarcastic, _"oh, well done, John"_ that doesn't come. "You could… lean against the other wall?"

"Smells strange."

"Oh, right." John throws up his arms, diluted blood streaming down his fingers, palms, wrists. "It smells strange. I'm Sherlock Holmes who puts rotting corpses in the fridge, but this wall is too _smelly_ for me."

Sherlock scowls at him. "It wasn't an entire corpse. Just a head. And your obvious attempt to goad me into irritation so that I'd forget about the church, while appreciated, will get you nowhere."

"A severed head's bad enough if you ask me." John shrugs, not particularly bothered by the ease with which Sherlock reads him. "Smelled plenty bad." He peers out at the blurry street. "Paramedics are taking a while. Can't see a thing in this damn rain." Pushing errant strands of hair (needs a trim – hasn't had the time) out of his face, he turns back to Sherlock. "Should really start carrying a first aid kit around."

Sherlock tsks. "Boring. Clumsy. I'm fine." The tightness in the way his hand is clamped around the wound says otherwise. "Would slow you down. Can't have that."

"Lost without your blogger?" John asks casually.

The words that aren't said: _Lost without you_ because they are far too cliché and emotional to even factor into Sherlock's casual conversation. That's all right. They both sort of understand it anyways.

"It's like London's vanished," John continues after the absence of spoken words. "We're the only ones left."

"We can both hear the church."

"But we can't see them. It's like the Thames flooding. Well, from the sky." And John thinks about that time he imagined the two of them sailing on an ocean of London with their little flat as a lifeboat. He reaches out to take Sherlock's limp hand (careful not to move the shoulder) to keep himself from drowning.

Sherlock squeezes back faintly, unsure, but he tangles their wet and blood-laced fingers, his long pale digits sliding not-quite-perfectly against John's blunter ones. It doesn't matter, because it's good enough.

They smile crookedly at each other as the clouds, still pouring down relentlessly, seem to crack apart, just enough for the sun to sparkle on the hundred thousand droplets and puddles on the ground.

* * *

><p>AN: So this is my favourite section of both the fic and the song. (A:LDKSJFLDKFJ THE SONG) :D By the way, ff sucks at formatting. All my lovely interesting linebreaks are now gone. :(


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